


The Truth, If You'll Hear It

by wordswordswords7



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Angst, Best Friends Stevie Budd & David Rose, Episode: s04e07 The Barbecue, M/M, Missing Scene, Patrick Brewer loves David Rose, Stevie Budd is pissed, Stevie Budd is protective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-05
Updated: 2020-11-05
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:02:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27393178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordswordswords7/pseuds/wordswordswords7
Summary: After Rachel appears at the barbecue, and Patrick fails to smooth things over with David, he's still got two more conversations that need to happen before the day can end.First, Rachel.And then Stevie, if she'll listen. God, he hopes she'll listen.
Relationships: Patrick Brewer/David Rose, Stevie Budd & David Rose, Stevie Budd & Patrick Brewer
Comments: 7
Kudos: 178





	The Truth, If You'll Hear It

**Author's Note:**

> A few non-canony changes, namely that I like the thought that even if David won't let Alexis or their parents in the room, he'll open up about the incident to Stevie.

Stevie is standing there, waiting, when Patrick opens the door; a plate of food in her hand and a grim look on her face.

“Stevie–”

“Don’t,” she stops him, her expression icy and unwelcoming. “Move.”

He steps out of her way but turns back before she can disappear into David’s room.

“I just need to know which room–”

Again she interrupts him, as if wholly unwilling to hear him out. “Three.”

The door is shut in his face.

Patrick runs a hand through his hair, frozen in place for a moment longer. Only the sound of raised voices coming from behind the motel spurs him to move away from Room 7 and make his way to the other end of the motel.

“God, I didn’t _know_ , okay?”

“But who– _what_ just happened?”

“Oh Jo-ohn, it appears David has been positively bam _boozled_ by that pernicious rapscallion and his secret _fiancé_. Do try to keep up dear.”

Patrick knocks on Rachel’s door and wills her to open it before the Roses can turn the corner and see him waiting there. He barely contains his relief when she does.

“Patrick, what is going on?”

That relief is instantly replaced by dread.

“Can I come in? Please, we need to talk.” 

* * *

She sits on the edge of the bed, staring into her hands. The weight of his words sit heavily in the space between them. 

“Why didn’t you just tell me, when you left? Why…” Rachel struggles to find the words. “I deserved better than being left in the dark for _months_.”

Patrick looks across at her from his seat at the table, elbows on knees and holding his head in his hands.

“There was nothing to tell then,” he says softly, and it’s the truth. “It was like a fraction of a thought at the time.”

He’d known their relationship wasn’t working, that it hadn’t been for so long, but as the wedding date kept being put off again and again, Patrick had already been pushing some small semblence of a realization away for safe keeping. It had been so easy to bury under the other anxieties that came with settling into a life that felt _wrong_. That is, until David had brought it to the forefront of his mind just weeks after Patrick had exiled himself to Schitt’s Creek.

“Please don’t take this the wrong way, Rach but this...me being into men, it isn’t about you.”

She snaps her head up and glares at him.

“Bullshit,” she bites back. “You don’t break off a ten year relationship, a _wedding_ , and then say _it’s not you it’s me_.”

Patrick feels a trap in her words, is familiar with the way their fights have always gone. A choreographed dance to which he knows all the steps by memory. Rather than side step or cajole, he looks her square in the eye and gestures to the space between them.

“ _This_ would not have made for a happy marriage, regardless of what’s happening with me now. It wouldn’t have made for a long and happy life. I think it’s time we acknowledge that. I _thought_ we had before I left.”

She snaps her mouth shut and looks away from him, and he thinks he catches a flash of shame in her eyes. This is a rational version of Patrick that she hasn’t fought with before. A Patrick who isn’t rising at the provocation of “you left me in the dark”. Because maybe he never came out to her, but he hadn’t left her in the middle of the night then disappeared with no explanation either. He’d told her it didn’t feel right, even if he couldn’t explain exactly why. She had felt it too, he knew she had. He’d ended it with a finality that _she_ hadn’t taken seriously. Not to mention, his ending things had come on the heels of a less than stable history between them, not some picture perfect decade of romance.

And her showing up out of nowhere in his new home, potentially disrupting things for him here—well that’s on her, not him, and she knows it was wrong.

After a long stretch of silence she finally speaks.

“So this Daniel–”

“David.”

“This David, you see what? A long and happy life ahead of you with _him_?”

This is definitely taking things further than he and David have ever discussed. But maybe if he owes Rachel anything, it’s honesty about why they will never get back together. And maybe he owes it to himself too.

“I love him and it’s not hard work being together,” he looks her right in the eye when he says it, willing her to truly understand. “So yes, I see a very long future ahead of me with David.”

Rachel cries a little at that, and he doesn’t hold it against her (he might be holding back tears too). She has a right to grieve for a relationship that made up the bulk of their adult lives even if it wasn’t a healthy one.

“I’m sorry if me coming here has messed that up for you,” she says quietly at last. 

Patrick really, truly does not want to think about David’s stricken face or his words _this has really messed things up for me_ spoken through choked back tears just a few doors down. But that’s not the only thought that comes to mind, and Patrick feels sick and ashamed about what he says next.

“I need to ask you for a really big favour, Rachel. I really need you to keep all this to yourself. My parents...they don’t know yet.”

* * *

PB

Was David ok when I left?

SB

What do u think?

PB

I know I messed up. Can we please meet at the Cafe? I really need to explain everything.

SB

I’m not going to the cafe w u

Well Patrick is officially screwed if he can’t get Stevie to hear him out. He lays back on his bed and wonders miserably if Alexis can be convinced to meet, to listen to his pleas, and be trusted to take his apologies back to David. 

At his side, his phone pings with a new text.

SB

the bar 10

A thrill of hope makes his heart thrum against his chest, but Patrick can’t help but frown. Stevie knows that 10 PM on a weeknight is a stretch when he has to open the store the next morning. 

The store…Will David be there? Or will he take the day off to avoid seeing Patrick? Patrick isn’t sure what he hopes for, but knows he’ll probably be manning Rose Apothacary alone.

He pushes the thought away and turns back to his phone. He doesn’t care if he has to stay up all night to speak to Stevie. It has to be worth it. Looking at the time, Patrick groans. Three more hours to wollow in his anxiety. Three more hours to try and plan what he’ll say to convince her to believe him.

* * *

She doesn’t show until 10:20 and he has to force his impatience and frustration down when she stops at the bar first to get a drink before shrugging off her jacket and sitting at his table at The Wobbly Elm. 

“Thanks for coming, I wasn’t sure…”

She’s not looking at him and he let’s the words hang there. Finally, Stevie shrugs and downs almost half her pint of beer.

“Yeah well, he just fell asleep.”

She says it flatly, but the guilt is immediate and unrelenting. Patrick sits back and can feel the colour drain from his face.

“No, of course. I wasn’t– I didn’t mean to–”

Stevie finally rolls her eyes and looks at him. “Why am I here, Brewer?”

It feels so impersonal when she says his name like that, and Patrick hates it. He wants things to feel easy with her again, yearns for it and is surprised by how much he wants her approval and friendship all over again.

“I’m not engaged,” he knows he needs to start big to keep her sitting here. It works, he supposes because she isn’t leaving even if she looks thoroughly unimpressed. “I broke it off before I moved here. I told David–”

“I know what you told David,” she interrupts. “What I’m wondering is why you didn’t tell him sooner?”

Patrick has to back pedal a bit to redirect his explanation. This isn’t going as planned…

“We never really discussed our pasts.”

“So when I was standing in front of you in my apartment with the guy _both_ David and me had dated at the _same_ damn time, that didn’t trigger—I dunno— a larger conversation at all between you two idiots?”

He has to take solace in the fact that she’s calling David an idiot too in this scenerio.

“We didn’t want to mess things up,” it sounds like a lame excuse when he says it out loud. And then because he’s a complete moron, Patrick defensively adds, “He hasn’t really told me specifics about his exes either.”

She shakes her head and breathes out through her nose, as if trying to figure out how this mess has landed in her lap. “Yeah there’s a pretty big fucking difference there, and I think you know exactly what it is.”

When Patrick can’t find the words to respond she puts her glass down so hard against the table that what’s left of the beer sloshes over the rim. Stevie leans forward, finger pointed angrily at him.

“Not one of those assholes was ever good to him, and I know you know that even if he never gave you details. They pulled shit like you did to Rachel all the time. So sure, maybe you’ve been really good—like _weirdly_ good—to David so far, but something like this? Patrick, from where he’s standing it sure as shit looks like you made promises to your _fiance_ and then dropped her to start a new life with someone new. I– he didn’t think _you_ could do that to a person. And who’s to say you won’t just do it to him too?”

It’s the longest, most impassioned speech he’s ever heard from Stevie and it hits him like a freight train. Patrick slumps back into his chair, wrung out and gutted. It’s not _r_ _ight_ though and he needs to defend himself—give her all the details—but he can’t help but feel like her assessment isn’t 100% off either. Because he can see how it looks from her side, from David’s side. He can see how they might think that he’s capable of it, but it hurts so damn much that they might actually _believe_ it.

He takes a minute to absorb her accusations. Not necessarily David’s accusations parroted back through her though; Patrick heard that slip up. _I didn’t think you could do that to a person._ And he wonders how much influence Stevie had on David taking a chance on Patrick in the beginning, and if this level of anger isn't because she feels betrayed by him too.

“I would never do that to David.”

She doesn’t answer, just makes eye contact with the bartender and raises her beer glass to ask for another.

“Stevie, who _have_ to believe me,” he’s pleading now, wishing she would look at him. “What happened between Rachel and I...I would do it again in a heart beat but I didn’t do it lightly, and I didn’t do it to hurt her. We weren’t happy and we would have been miserable if we’d gotten married, and _she knows that_. When I ended things the last time, I _ended_ them for good. She just wouldn’t take no for an answer. I didn’t leave her with no explanation to start a new life. I left because it didn’t make sense for us to stay together when it was such hard work to sometimes even _like_ each other."

"Why would you propose to her than?" she asks it like it's the one last bastion of her righteous anger.

He sighs and runs a hand through his hair. "I didn't, not really. We'd been together so long, we just sort of...agreed that it made sense to finally get engaged."

He thinks maybe she’s softening. Thinks he sees her shoulders drop a little and her blank mask slip just slightly. The bartender comes with another beer and Patrick takes the opportunity of the interruption to lean in and place a beseaching hand over her small pale one. She finally looks him in the eye, unsure, but doesn’t pull away.

“You need to believe me when I say, that with David it’s easy. So, _so_ easy. Nothing about what we have makes me want to leave him behind to start a new life with someone else. I would never do that to him. I know the kind of damage that’s been done to him, and I could never– I couldn’t be like them to him. I’m in this for the long haul. We run a small business together, for christ’s sake. If that isn’t some endgame in-it-till-we’re-two-old-gays shit than I don’t know what is. I love him and I can’t let one stupid visit from an ex completely ruin that for us.”

There’s a beat of silence where they simply hold each other’s looks, before Stevie is pulling her hand away and looking down at her drink. He can’t tell if she’s going to speak or leave him sitting here in misery.

“He needs some space,” she finally says, her tone so much softer than he thinks he’s ever heard it. “Maybe this wasn’t some huge betrayal, but a girl claiming to be your fiance did just crash his anniversary barbecue, so I think you owe him that much.”

A small flicker of hope blooms in his gut. “Of course.”

“And then maybe I can try and...I dunno, convince him to take your call or answer a text. Because everything you just said to me? You probably should have said that to him right off the bat.”

He lets out a shaky laugh, “Yeah, I know. I’m a complete idiot.”

“You both are.”

Now that he can breathe again, Patrick realizes that Stevie is looking pretty shaken herself.

“Are you okay,” he asks tentatively. “Are _we_ okay?”

She shoots him a glare, but the kind that is a dime a dozen coming from Stevie Budd. “Do me a favour. The next time you decide to keep a secret from David because you don’t want to rock the boat, or whatever, try and remember he’s a barbed wired strongbox of trust issues and for some reason I have the key.” 

He can only nod, aware that she’s probably the kind of supportive best friend to David that she’s never had to be for anyone else before. And it makes him think all the more that she probably _was_ the deciding factor that pushed David to take a risk on Patrick.

“I don’t like too many people in this town Patrick, and I don’t like having to dislike _you_. But I will. For him. Remember that.”

And then she’s pounding back the rest of her beer, standing up and throwing her leather jacket over her shoulder.

“You’re buying.”

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I don't know what I think about this story, buuuuuut I had a thought and now it's words (for better or for worse).


End file.
